Monday, 31 December 2012

Another year packed full of treats, chaos, splendour, and naughtiness.CONVERSATIONS WITH BIRDS

A large slab of the year was taken up in the production of this radio piece for Bayerischer Rundfunk, an ornithological mosaic which was given a special mention for Horspiel Das Monats. You can stream and download the piece here.

ELEVEN SONGS

The new collection of songwriting by Ergo was released in December on Care in the Community Recordings to critical acclaim: "Always accessible yet always otherwordly" - BBC

"There are brains and
vast imagination at every juncture" - Americana UK

"Cleverly and lovingly
constructed" - The Wire

"One of the quiet highlights of the musical year"
- MusicOMH

"Phizmiz's art places him as the real deal" -
TheUpcoming

"Balancing off the wall whackiness with accessibility,
Phizmiz hasn't just delivered eleven songs but eleven very good songs" -
Shout4Music

"Flawless" - Pennyblack MusicThe album is available to buy through all major music stockists, whatever that means, and here's the first music video from the album, directed by Simon Mathewson and Martha Moopette.

And a couple of album outtakes....

RAKEDIKA

The Autonoise Collective released a limited edition of 100 cassettes of Ergo Phizmiz's "Rakedika", a new collection of electronic music created entirely from cut-ups of Autonoise's own Hacked Toys. Buy it at Autonoise.

THE KEYSTONE CUT UPS and MOON MAGIC

The fabulous Illegal Art released the DVD and 7" single from the continuing collaboration of People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz (of which, exciting new things happening in 2013). The project plays with the relationships between early silent-comedy and avant-garde cinema, to an original instrumental score. You can purchase the DVD, and the 7" imminently, on ergophizmiz.net

FAMILIES, INTIMATE SITUATIONS, OPIUM ARCHITECTURE and THE BEHEMOTH

Ergo's first solo exhibition of paper and mixed media collages was presented at Depozitory on the Isle of Wight in early December to enthusiastic reception, with a performance of the seldom shown "Fulcanelli's Shoes".

THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN
The new production by Patrick Sims and Les Antliaclastes Marionettes featured musical elements by Ergo Phizmiz. The piece tours extensively in the coming year.

CINEMACOLLAGES VOLUME 2

Continuing adventures in the sonic landscapes of cinema, focusing on the works of Karel Zeman, Piotr Kamler, and Orson Welles.

STRANGE THINGS

An online only EP of synthetic orchestral music, sound-collage and a cover version of John Holt's "Strange Things".

POPGASMS

Adventures in "disposable music", which feed, as with many of Ergo's playwithexperimentalish works of 2012, into his 2013 radio piece "Boojum".

RADIO BOREDCAST

For Vicki Bennett's mammoth 744 hour long radio broadcast, Ergo sang the entirety of foru Gilbert and Sullivan operas from memory, whilst in the midst of some form of nasty breakdown caused by trying to tour a Flann O'Brien opera with no money. Listen here, if you can stand it....

ERGO PLAYS ROBERT ASHLEY

One of the most detested CD releases of the year, Ergo's combination of Robert Ashley and Winner's Dinners, recorded in Poland and released on Michal Libera's brilliant Populista imprint, stuck a lollipop firmly up the bum of the so called avant-garde. Respect nothing, or death!

QUEEN OF NAMES

The one-man retrospective of opera and opera related work premiered at this year's Tete-a-Tete: The Opera Festival, and can be seen in its entirety here.

CARING IN THE COMMUNITY

The splendid folks at Tete-a-Tete Opera commissioned a short opera about miserable neighbours from Ergo, who has lots of experience in the area. You can view a performance of the opera here.

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2013 promises many treats, including the science-fiction-autobiography-radioplay "Boojum" on WDR3 in January, a string of live dates, a new project with People Like Us, a new opera about the wife of a very famous artist, and a UK tour of the new piece for theatre / animation / collage and electronic music "Gargantua".﻿

Tuesday, 4 December 2012

"Balancing off the wall whackiness with accessibility, Phizmiz hasn't just delivered eleven songs, but eleven very good songs" - Shout4Music

After the critical success of his 2010 debut album, Things To Do and Make, composer Ergo Phizmiz returned to a string of often award winning commissions for radio (BBC 3 and 4 and German national radio) theatre and opera before coming back full circle to the melodic three minute popular song form. Earlier this year, over the space of a few weeks, and in typically prolific style, he refined and self-recorded a number of ideas that had been forming in his head while busy with other projects. Leaving behind the favourable comparisons to the 1960s Canterbury Sound or Vivian Stanshall of his debut and occupying less identifiable territory, the resulting Eleven Songs is a leaner, harder collection of songs that, as the title suggests, each stand in their own right. Although ostensibly the album consists of ten songs and an instrumental, Ergo considers Space Dance, a Sun Ra tribute, in the manner of Lieder ohne Worte, a song without words.

With no default mode of music making, but versed in so many, it would be fair to call Ergo a music conceptualist. But the purposeful construction of his writing and production methods are always in the service, rather than at the expense, of the pure joy of what makes a good song. Anyone who has seen Ergo perform will instantly recognise in these songs his natural theatricality, narrative drive, and a lack of pretension that allows music to be a shared experience. This is a highly addictive album that should echo the chorus of voices that acclaimed his first album with the lament that there aren't more pop musicians like this.

Friday, 16 November 2012

Ergo Phizmiz's "Gargantua" tours the UK in March 2013. Here are some musical bits that didn't make the final edit, or made the edit in very different ways.Full tour dates announced soon. European tour also looking likely, and some USA possibilities.....

Tuesday, 16 October 2012

This Friday sees the premiere broadcast of "Conversations With Birds", a 45 minute horspiel on birds, language, memory, dreams and art-history in a mixture of English, German, Polish and Bird Language by Ergo Phizmiz.

Created with a stellar group of collaborators and cast members from across the gamut of artistic mediums including Juliane Meckert, Margita Zalite, Patrick Sims, Denis Kundic (aka Vernon Lenoir), Michal Libera, Martha Moopette, Dwoogie, Caroline Stupnicka, Flora Bertolli, and Oblivian Substanshall.

The piece was commissioned by Katarina Agathos for Bayerischer Rundfunk, and can be listened to by tuning in at 9pm German time this Friday 19th October.

Monday, 1 October 2012

We’re very pleased to announce the release on Illegal Art of a DVD, 7″ single and digital audio album!

When People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz premiered The Keystone Cut Ups at the Berwick Film and Media Art Festival in 2010, it was met with praise and wonder. Invoking a dreamlike atmosphere from the pairing of surrealist avant-garde cinema and silent-era comedy films with the quirky, yet emotionally resonating soundtrack carved out a unique sector of musical entertainment. This project stands tall as a statement against an industry that often flounders in its own creative bankruptcy.

Until now, this experience has only been available to those fortunate enough to see it performed live. But this October, people all over the world can see what all the hype is about for themselves when Illegal Art releases The Keystone Cut Ups on DVD, as well as just the musical portion as a digital download and as a 7′ single.

With this release, Illegal Art continues to embrace a pay-what-you-want business model for high-quality downloads. All label releases over the last five years have been issued (or reissued) under a the flexible payment system. People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz also have a history of offering free downloads of entire projects, both new and old.

Monday, 17 September 2012

For sale, a single-edition music release comprising 2 x 10" vinyl, one 45 minute audio cassette, and one 20 second loop cassette. Entitled "Vestibule", the release is based on Ergo Phizmiz's performance from the 2006 Bestival, and has slowly formed into its current state since then.One record contains remixes of Gagaku music, recomposed orchestral music, and a combination of the two.The other record is a mishmash of beats, bad hip-hop acappellas over said beats, recomposed opera, and Japanese Noh Theatre.The loop cassette is a montage of Hungarian vocal music and electronics.The 45 minute cassette is a combination of an array of sonic elements, including sound-poetry, film soundtracks, and electroacoustic compositions."Vestibule", then, is a release best experienced with two turntables and two cassette decks in front of you. Designed for simultaneous listening and constant chance mixing, it's a release for infinite permutation. There's no one way of listening to it.The pack will arrive as you see it above. Both records are packaged in cardboard, elastoplasts, watercolour paint and gramophone needles.You want it? Contact ergophizmiz at gmail dot com and name your price ..... Chinchin.

Sunday, 16 September 2012

Greetings my sweet and sexy peas. Welcome to the new splurge of Ergo Phizmiz news....

The new single from Ergo Phizmiz "Time To Think It Over" is an outtake from the forthcoming album "Eleven Songs". The single is released download-only on Care in the Community Recordings this month. The album is released on December 3rd. Poptastic.

October 19th on Bayerischer Rundfunk sees the premiere broadcast of the new radioplay from Ergo Phizmiz. "Conversations With Birds" is a labrynthian game of language, opera, history, travel and literature.

Illegal Art are releasing a DVD of People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz "The Keystone Cut Ups", a montage of silent-comedy and early avant-garde cinema with an original instrumental score. A 7" single of two musical cuts ("Moon"/"Magic") is also imminent.

Autonoise are releasing an edition of 100 cassettes, "RAKEDIKA". Subtitled "games for music to play with toys", the album is made entirely from edits of Autonoise's own hacked toys.

If you are near Lausanne at the moment, head to Theatre Vidy to see "The Old Man Of The Mountain" from Patrick Sims & Les Antliaclastes Marionettes, featuring music by Ergo Phizmiz, Ata Ebtekar and Oriol Viladomiou. The work also tours extensively in the coming year.

Taking up the majority of time at Phizmiz Towers & Atelier Royale is the production of "GARGANTUA", the new work for theatre by Ergo Phizmiz. Combining electronic music with vocals, puppetry, collage, dance and animation, the work is a hallucinatory encyclopedic voyage on the high seas of time and space. Inspired by Rabelais, but referencing, well, pretty much everything, it's set to be a unique sensory adventure. It tours the UK in March 2013, with a planned European tour for late 2013.Supported by PRS Foundation, Qujunktions, UpItUp Records, Bridport Arts Centre, The Waiting Room, and Soundart Radio. The work, as per usual, was rejected funding from the Arts Council - there is a huge crowdfunding campaign planned to take off in the coming weeks, so if you can chip in, please do.Thanks for reading .... I blow you big wet sloppy kisses across an apocalyptic landscape of knives, forks, spoon, and stones....

Friday, 14 September 2012

The new single "Time To Think It Over" by Ergo Phizmiz, an outtake from the forthcoming LP "Eleven Songs". The single is released September 2012, the album released December 3rd on Care In The Community Recordings.

Friday, 31 August 2012

Ergo Phizmiz's Creative Commons licensed music continues to be used regularly as soundtracks for a stunningly diverse range of short films online. Dip into the below videos ..... bacteria, rock-climbing, dogs, giants, state-fairs....

Wednesday, 15 August 2012

A spoken-word audio/video opera by Ergo Phizmiz, with text entirely snipped from the writings of Noel Coward. The audio is created from Ergo's collection of gramophone records, a sample from Monteverdi's "Combattimento de Tancredi", a wooden kitchen door, and Ergo's "Hallucination Duets".

Tuesday, 7 August 2012

Recorded live at Cafe Oto, London, in July 2012, "Music for Merz & Barn vs Opera for Mills & Boon" imagines a boxing match of aesthetics at the end of the universe, refereed by Marlene Dietrich.Contributors to the boxing match are: Kurt Schwitters "Ursonate", field-recordings from the Elterwater Merzbarn, the Marlene Dietrich song "Lili Marlene", extracts from Mills & Boon novels, Russian church bells, Monteverdi's "Combattimento di Tancredi", and Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time".Ergo performed on voice, piano, music-box, glass, laptop, turntable. He also threw shapes. What else would you expect?The performance evening was curated by Discrepant.net

Wednesday, 18 July 2012

Twenty-four choice choppings of instrumental music by UK based composer, collagist, writer, film-maker, imaginary raconteur, and fancy-footworker. Recorded between 2009-2012 for radioplays, short films, theatre, and opera.

This release will be available for a limited time only, in the run up to Ergo Phizmiz's appearances at Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival 2012 and Interzone Theatre's "The Grinder" project, which is written by Ergo Phizmiz.

It is available exclusively via the Pay-With-a-Tweet service, and why not eh?

"Around the age of 11 or 12 I became obsessed with the comic operettas of Gilbert & Sullivan. This fascination lasted around 3 years. There were posters of W.S. Gilbert (the "S" stands for Schwenck, rather spectacularly) and Arthur Sullivan on my bedroom wall.

For years the thought of returning to their works "from memory" has been at the back of my mind. My very boring contribution to Radio Boredcast is "acappella" versions of the G & S operettas "HMS Pinafore", "Iolanthe", "The Pirates of Penzance" and "The Mikado".

Some of them I know better than others. In the cases where I didn't know the melodies, I made them up or roughly talked through them. I also decided to not use different voices for characters (these recordings are my second takes - the first takes sounded like The Goon Show and to be honest I had far too much fun doing them for it be genuinely boring), and to omit stage directions, so we are left with a very boring barrage of Victorian words, tuned and untuned, from my tired, monotone voice."

Ergo Phizmiz is a composer, writer, and multimedia artist. He makes pop, theatre, installations, opera, radio-art, radioplays, sound-collages and performances. He lives in Bridport, UK, and has a headache. He never wants to perform Gilbert & Sullivan again.

Tuesday, 26 June 2012

The Grinder is nourished by our information, our thoughts, our tweets, our images, our videos, our sounds and our dreams. Within The Grinder all this information exists in a state of perpetual alchemy, as 0s and 1s, as flesh/meat, as hallucinations, as fragments of sounds, as shards of vinyl, toys, texts, paper, machinery, microchips.

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Everything within it exists in a constant state of permutation, existence and non-existence, as The Grinder explores and reflects every ever-increasing possibility in upon itself. The entirety of the internet is set to feed into The Grinder which, due to it's existence between the physical and virtual, occupies no fixed abode.

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Until now. A triumphant feat of hacking has left The Grinder temporarily locked in one physical space. You will follow a chain of events across a series of locations, with a wide range of permutations and possible routes, incorporating clues and strange characters on your way to discovery.

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The Grinder takes place in Clerkenwell and Bethnal Green

Audience will need an iPhone or Android smartphone.

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Interzone Theatre is a covert performance platform for an audience of one.It is an exploratory theatrical experience where the buildings, parks and waterways serve as a backdrop and passersby unwitting extras in a psycho-geographical interactive journey through the cityscape. Passersby become unwitting extras as the audience tries to decipher who is a character in the narrative and who is not, they might see the dots but only the audience can connect them and see the narrative unfolding with each zone they step in.

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Interzone Theatre is based on sound design to convey the story. Sound gives context to a scene and gives the audience access to a parallel world superimposed on familiar locations and daily interactions.

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Interzone Theatre requires an iPhone or Android smartphone. You are given headphones and a start point, its up to you to find out the ending.